I use a feature

Gareth Butterfield reviews the new Ugreen 9-in-1 docking station

Powerful docking stations have become a bit of a home-office staple, as many of us settle into a new way of remote working and we try to emulate our high-tech office setup at home.

And a powerful docking station needs to cover a few important bases. Firstly, it needs lots of ports. It also needs decent data transfer speeds, and it must have powerful charging capabilities.

It's also a bonus if it's small and compact, and that's the first thing that struck me about Ugreen's latest 9-in-1 docking station. It's really neat.

But don't let its diminutive size fool you, it's also beautifully made, and it ticks plenty of boxes when it comes to setting up a decent home office.

It's called a 9-in-1 because it has nine ports. I'll run you through them. There's two HDMI ports, two DisplayPorts, a 100w USB-C port, a Gen-2 data port that supports 10Gbps through USB-C and two 10Gbps conventional USB data ports. There's also a 1,000Mbps ethernet port.

Obviously, with all these options and all this power, it's dead easy to set up an efficient multi-screen setup, which is what I've been doing. And I haven't had a flicker. It hasn't put a foot wrong, it just silently gets on with the job.

It also comes with an array of cables in the box, which is handy, and the quality of all its peripherals is top-notch, as I've come to expect from UGreen.

The recommended retail price is £199, which keeps it in line with most of its competitors, but there's an offer on Amazon at the moment knocking it down to £169.99 - and then a further offer of a £10 voucher to take that down to £159.99 at the checkout.

And for that money, it's superb value. Very hard to pick any faults with this, in fact. It's terrific.